


Turn Towards This Time

by toucanpie



Category: Empires (Band), Panic! at the Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: Light Bondage, M/M, hint of D/s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:35:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toucanpie/pseuds/toucanpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom joins Panic! on the NWRC tour and slowly pieces himself back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turn Towards This Time

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ. Written for the no_tags exchange in 2010 (!). Title from New Order's _Ceremony_

"It's his latest thing," Brendon says, chewing on a nail. "We did try and warn him he'll probably get picked up by somebody looking for more than hand-holding, but he won't listen."

"Maybe I want someone to pick me up for more than hand-holding," Ryan says, rolling his eyes. "Jesus, I'm twenty years old."

"Okay," Brendon says. "I'm just saying."

Ryan mimics him silently and Tom grins, watching the leather cuff get twisted round a thin wrist one more time.

"I didn't know you kids were so hardcore."

That time they both flip him off, and he laughs.

-

"You know there are places you can go," he says later when it's just him and Ross, alone in someone's hotel room and looking for clean clothes so they can go out. "People who'll take care of you like that."

Ryan pauses in rustling through a bag and looks up at him.

"Yeah, I'd figured," he says slowly, like he's talking to a four year old.

Tom threads his belt through the loops on his jeans, one by steady one. "Maybe it's not the kind of thing you should trust to a stranger in a bar."

"Thanks for the advice, Conrad," Ryan says. "If I need tips on buying handcuffs, I'll definitely give you a call."

Tom bites his lip on a smile and shakes his head.

Ryan stops sorting through the bag and looks up again, white fabric hanging from his left hand.

"Don't wait up," he says, smiling as he walks over and pushes the clean t-shirt into Tom's chest.

-

"So what have you thought about, then?"

Tom closes his eyes once he's spoken, almost hearing them click shut, and then takes another mouthful of the whiskey straight, straight down. Nothing has changed when he opens them again. Ross is still sitting cross-legged next to him, looking down at his feet.

Tom waves the bottle in his eye-line but he pushes it away, turning and staring.

"I've thought about been chained down to stone."

"Huh," Tom says, not able to look away but not quite sure how to deal with such artistry. "No girls in leather boots, hmm?"

Ryan smiles tiredly, his mouth folding, giving way rather than curving. "The crows peck at my skin."

Tom drags his eyes somewhere else. To the curtains, the bedside table, the covers that are tucked neatly beneath the mattress.

"Drink," he says, nudging the bottle towards Ryan blindly, rubbing his hand over the paper cut on his finger. "Watch less Hitchcock."

He hears the bottle lift up, then feels Ryan's body shift closer. There's warm air against his cheek for a second and then Ryan's head dropping against his shoulder.

"They bandage me from head to toe but I bleed right through," Ryan says. "The chains won't come undone."

Tom's body feels heavy as he sighs. Lazy and slow, slovenly warm and sleepy with heat.

"Jesus fuck," he mutters. "I can't tell whether you're drunker than I am or not."

-

The half-dead fan whirs and then stops in its arc to angle back the way it came. All before any cold air can hit Tom.

He rolls his ankles like it might cool him, hears bones click together somewhere and yawns. Urie is walking up and down the bus aisle on his cell, gesturing as he talks.

Jon is grinning at him from the floor with the fan air hitting him almost continually and a fresh beer in his right hand.

Tom finds he is grinning too. Somewhere along the line Urie and his punctuating finger clicks became a show. 

Also providing entertainment is Ryan. Currently searching the bus for the book Tom has trapped between his spine and the couch.

"Are you sitting on it?" Ryan snaps.

Tom shrugs.

"Did Spence put it in the fridge again?"

"Ryan," Jon says. "Have a beer, dude, sit down. The book can wait."

"If it's on the roof and we drive off without it, I'll kill you."

"Tom's sitting on it," Jon says. "Now chill."

Ryan turns to stare at Tom, a hand starting to rise in pointed threat. There's a smile curving at the corner of his mouth though.

Tom reaches behind him and pulls the book out just as Ryan shifts and clambers onto the couch.

"Oh, you want this?" Tom says, raising his hands away behind him.

Ryan leans forward, slotting knees outside his thighs, and sets his jaw as he stretches for it.

The couch creaks beneath them and Tom laughs. Ryan's hand stops to rest on the inside of his elbow instead of reaching further up.

Tom smiles. At him, at their faces so close, at his arms stretched out and Ryan all but on his lap.

"You're a dick," Ryan says in the silence where they watch each other. Then he climbs off him to sit to the side.

"I could have told you that," Jon says.

Tom lets the book go lazily, hearing it clatter on the floor behind him a second later. 

Ryan sighs and reaches out to change the angle of the fan with his foot.

Cool air wafts over Tom's face and he closes his eyes.

-

Out round the back of the bus Tom watches the sun go down, a forgotten bottle of beer sitting next to him for company.

The show doesn't start for another hour but the others are getting ready so it's just the two of them. Him with his fingers flicking lazily against the glass. It sat there sullenly, a dead fly trapped in its gut.

On his phone he has notifications of four missed calls, none of which he feels like returning and none of which are from Mike, Sisky, or Butcher.

Or William.

"Hey cowboy," Jon says, folding down out of nowhere to join him on the ground. "How's it hanging?"

Tom smiles, turning sideways to share it.

"It's hanging good," he says slowly, and it doesn't feel like too much of an untruth. Two weeks ago he was angry, a week ago he was apathetic, these days he's pretty content. Like his body is starting to feel easy again. Like he's been sitting next to a warm fire just long enough for some of the heat to seep in.

-

The hotel bed dips as Tom sits down on it and Ryan pauses in kicking off his socks.

"What?" he says, occupied with examining his toes.

Tom runs one finger over the top of Ryan's waistcoat, draws out a quest as he follows the path in patterns on the fabric. Halfway through Ryan turns to look up at him slowly.

His shoulder is steady as Tom cups it and nudges experimentally.

Ryan's fingers clench in his lap and his lips turn hard against each other. The tendons in his throat shift defiantly as he swallows.

Then, suddenly, he goes. His shoulders hitting the bed, his head shuffling onto the pillow.

"So?" he says, less guarded but no less fierce.

Tom climbs over him, stretches himself out on his side, tucks a hand in a back pocket of Ryan's dated pants.

"So," he confides.

-

He tests the stubble on Ryan's jaw, maps out the stubborn tilt to his chin. He smoothes his hands over Ryan's neck, presses his palms to his collarbone.

Ryan lies there and watches, eyes blinking slowly, legs shifting occasionally against the covers.

Tom unbuttons the waistcoat and lets it fall to the floor to join their shoes. Ryan reaches out for the first time then, rubs a thumb against his prickly cheek.

He watches Ryan watch him, smiles when the thumb turns into precocious fingers touching the metal in his nose.

"Hurt?" Ryan says

"Maybe," Tom says, dropping his head forward to watch his hands slip under Ryan's t-shirt.

He eases it up Ryan's torso, up his arms as they rise, then slowly tangles it round his wrists.

He presses his forehead to Ryan's chest and feels it rise and fall steadily. He catches the sudden tremors when Ryan thinks about it all too much. He closes his eyes when the breathing evens out for real.

His hands sit quiet at Ryan's waist, the sun fades through the blinds, the world bleeds away.

They steal twelve minutes of silence. Then, halfway through the thirteenth, somebody yells for them through the door.

-

Ryan drops to his knees on a tiled floor with a clumsy thump and Tom tips his chin up.

He hasn't covered himself with make-up yet and his skin is pale against the creamy bathroom walls.

"Behind your back," Tom says, softer than he usually knows how to ask.

He pops the button on his jeans as Ryan folds his hand behind him.

"Like this?" Ryan asks.

"Yeah," Tom says, easing down his zipper, calm despite the blood rushing south and the easy flush on Ryan's cheeks. "Done this before?"

Ryan doesn't answer. Goes further still by not even making movement that might say he was thinking. Doesn't even blink.

Tom traces his lips with his fingers, then places them more firmly against the bottom one. Ryan opens his mouth and bites softly.

Tom pushes his jeans down just far enough that he can ease himself out of his underwear, and then he leans back against the wall as Ryan's breathing changes from slow to a touch faster right there against the crown of his dick.

-

They go a week with nothing. 

He shoots pictures. Of kids with outstretched hands, of Urie with his face pale from powder and his mouth red from paint. Of Jon, sweating, with guitar after guitar safe and sturdy in his hand. He catches Smith flipping him his middle finger, Ryan with colour crawling out of his eye sockets and down over his cheeks. He snaps cars from the bus window as they pass. He captures empty venues just before the lights go down.

Sisky texts.

He replies, crashed on a couch backstage somewhere between two faces he doesn't know.

The road judders and then rolls on endlessly beneath them. They leave more and more of the world behind.

-

On another hotel bed, somewhere in California, he returns the favour he owes.

He blows Ryan steady and slow, pulling off as he pleases to catch up on oxygen and stroke at trembling thighs. 

Then he picks up where he left off, keeping it cycling until Ryan's sighs become audible and his hips twitch when he's not being sucked. Until he feels like he almost might run out of spit.

Ryan's hands lie dead by his side throughout. All but for the moment when he reaches out and presses his thumb to Tom's forehead as he starts to lift off once more.

Tom slips back down and finishes it there and then with Ryan choking out a sole stilted gasp and bucking up into his mouth.

-

Tour ends. He calls Smith Spencer once, and once only, and gets blown a wry kiss in return. He fistbumps Brendon and hopes he's managed to get everything that's his in his bags. Then he finds himself home.

He catches up with friends, remembers how to pick up a phone, goes out, sees a film. 

Jon throws a party, so he goes, guessing at who might be out of town but mostly uncaring of what he could find when he climbs into a cab.

There, he finds himself hitting old acquaintances in the arms and smiling at an ex across the room. He slowly drinks his way through a beer in-between talking more than he means to and allowing somebody to make him shuffle-dance.

He ducks inside the kitchen when they boo him too loudly and finds Spencer and Ryan helping themselves to alcohol there.

They make themselves a three and talk as Tom pokes his curious way through the contents of Jon's fridge.

Someone calls a challenge from another room and Spencer wanders away as Ryan stays, silent, fingering the beer he hasn't really touched.

-

They make their way through the house without comment. Find Jon's bathroom and lock themselves in as they set their bottles on the toilet lid.

Ryan says 'hey' and they kiss against the sink.

-

Tom takes him home, ties him to his headboard, and leaves marks all over his neck. 

Ryan's legs reach up to twine around his body and he talks, quietly. Throws him a joke as he fumbles for a condom, mumbles suggestions as he strips off the last of his clothes.

Tom fucks him fast, then slow. Varies it until he's heard all the noises he wants and Ryan's hair is sticking in strands to his forehead. 

He looks up at Ryan's mouth, bitten red over and over by them both, and lets him tip over the edge, leaning down to swallow anything they could have to say.

-

Ryan ties his hands together as the sun pushes its way through the curtains. Then he brushes all the ticklish places he can find and Tom does his best not to struggle against it, looping his hands round Ryan's neck to try and see the teasing over with instead.

Ryan ducks out and ties him at the elbows as well. Messy knot after messy knot and rope trailing to puddle in-between his thighs

Tom gives up and leans back against the headboard, letting Ryan run curious hands over his stomach. Letting him kiss him, finally, exactly as he wants.

-

They kiss in his hallway too, with the door partly open but no one else around. With Ryan letting him though Tom almost thinks he won't. 

Ryan touches his face tentatively, as if unlike the world rushing past outside he might not be alive, and they press the door back to shut. 

Tom pushes him against a line of coats and they lose five minutes to Ryan's fingers tracing his browbone, his closed eyes, the side of his neck. Another five to the brushing of their noses and the messy movement of their mouths.

When they re-open the door, the cars are coming by more frequently and the wind is colder against Tom's bare toes. 

He pushes the hair from his face and shrugs a goodbye as he leans against the frame to watch Ryan go.

The kitchen, when he squeaks his way across the lino to reach it, holds only an empty bottle on the table and leftovers in the fridge.

He finds himself a CD and puts it on as he makes calls, remembering more clearly than before the hum of a bus moving beneath him and the laughter of evening soundchecks. New people. Places he'd never been.


End file.
